“Si es absolutamente necesario que el arte o el teatro sirvan para algo, será para enseñar a la gente que hay actividades que no sirven para nada y que es indispensable que las haya”.

Escribir no es estar en tren de pensar; es, en parte, haber pensado, y relatar lo que se ha pensado toda la vida. Escribir es repetirse; se repite lo que se sabe. No escribir, para pensar.

Creo que todo esto no es tan verdadero: la escritura incita al pensamiento. Aunque las palabras desfigurarían el pensamiento.

Tan pronto me digo que mi muerte llegará mañana, como que creo que viviré diez años más.

Eugène Ionesco, Diarios íntimos

Jeanna is so adorable. She just complained that her dad bought her crunchie when she asked for crunch chocolate. Then I was like, just go eat nutella and she went “STUPID JEANNA”. LOL. She’s like the cutest thing ever. I wasn’t even half as cute when I was her age. Like really.

Omg I am really depressed. I have no idea how exam is going to be like. I’m about 70% done with everything.

I think it’s time to move on and learn new things. I went to google HN just now and gosh, I could actually find articles by her. I swear I feel like a major loser already.

This bit from The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco keeps going through my head.

Old Man: Can’t we just be happy with the little we have?

Old Woman: What if you’ve missed your true calling

Old Man: (bursts into tears) Missed it? Wrecked my life? I want my mummy. Mummy. Where’s my mummy? I’m an orpahn. (Moans.) Fatherless …. Motherless …

Old Woman: You’ve got me. Why be afraid?

Old Man: No, petty-pie. You’re not my mummy. Motherless, fatherless. who’s going to shelter me?

Old Woman: But I’m right beside you, poppet.

Old Man:It’s not the same. I want mummy. You’re not my mummy.

Old Woman: (strokes him) Darling, you’re breaking my heart. Don’t cry.

Old Man: Don’t touch me. I’m in too much pain. It’s my calling. I missed it and it hurts.

Old Woman: There, there…

Old Man: (sobbing, mouth wide open like a baby) Motherless, fatherless…

Eugene Ionesco:

„Was wir Gegenwart nennen, ist bloß der Zusammenprall von Gewesenem und Bevorstehendem – ein winziges Teil Sein, das sofort in die Elemente Vergangenheit und Zukunft zerfällt“.

Eugène Ionesco, di cui cade il centenario il 26 novembre, raccontava per burla agli amici di aver nascosto i propri inediti, i brogliacci dei suoi capolavori, i quaderni degli appunti nella scatola dei giochi della figlia. Eppure, convinto com’era della vanità di tutte le cose, lasciò in consegna alla moglie Radica, compagna di sessant’anni di vita, di distruggere tutto alla sua morte, avvenuta nel 1994.

 «Il paradosso di Ionesco», racconta a Libero Noëlle Giret, direttrice della mostra dedicata al drammaturgo franco-romeno, allestita fino al 3 gennaio alla Bibliothèque Nationale de France-François Mitterand, «è di essere stato, come ogni creatore, preoccupato dalla posterità della sua opera e al tempo stesso poco disposto a conservarne le tracce tangibili».

 I desideri non esauditi. Ma Radica non attese ai desideri del marito e gli inediti, a quindici anni dalla morte, sono venuti alla luce. «Questa “scoperta”, se così si può dire, la si deve proprio alla moglie», continua Noëlle Giret, «che pazientemente ha conservato manoscritti, corrispondenza, fotografie, programmi e locandine delle rappresentazioni teatrali avvenute in tutto il mondo».

 Negli anni Cinquanta Ionesco, insieme a Samuel Beckett e ad Arthur Adamov inaugura la stagione del teatro dell’assurdo o, come preferisce definirlo, della derisione. Sotto questa espressione confluiscono molti stili e molti autori di diversa caratura, che convergono però nel rifiuto del teatro dominante, troppo ingessato e lontano dalla vita. «Mio padre» spiega la figlia Marie-France Ionesco al Magazine litteraire ora in edicola, «torna sull’esperienza del teatro di Guignol, che gli rivela il mondo allo stato puro. Occorreva trovare questa magia, esplorare la natura stessa della teatralità, lontanto da tutto ciò che gli appariva falso nelle scene».

 Le pièce di questo filone esprimono le insensatezze e l’incomunicabilità del linguaggio quotidiano, per testimoniare la solitudine e l’isolamento dell’uomo. Ma l’opera di Ionesco non si esurisce in questa constatazione, animata com’è da un anelito religioso. «Mio Dio, fai che io creda in te», scriverà Ionesco in La ricerca intermittente.

 Pochi mesi fa nella sua casa di Parigi, in boulevard de Montparnasse, «con Marie-France», racconta ancora Noëlle Giret, «abbiamo trascorso settimane ad aprire armadi da cui tracimavano valanghe di archivi che abbiamo identificato, selezionato e classificato il più rapidamente possibile per la mostra di questi giorni». La messe di documenti inediti, ora depositati alla Bibliothèque Nationale, se non portano acqua nuova (perché «l’essenziale è tutto pubblicato» conferma la figlia al Magazine Littéraire) di certo permettono di cogliere il processo di creazione dei suoi lavori. «Rendere disponibili gli archivi di Ionesco», dichiara la bibliotecaria e studiosa d’Oltralpe, «sarà molto importante per la ricerca, che d’ora in avanti avrà a sua disposizione i manoscritti, in tutte le fasi della loro scrittura, i progetti, gli inediti, le note che chiariranno e completeranno quanto ha pubblicato nei suoi scritti e nei suoi diari».

 Il testo mai visto. Ma cosa si trova di tanto stupefacente nella sua casa di Parigi? «Il documento più “mitico”», confessa Noëlle Giret, «è il manuale di conversazione inglese Assimil proprio quello che gli ha ispirato la La cantatrice calva». La pièce riproduce nei dialoghi, riflettendo la vacuità dei personaggi, solo cliché e frasi insensate, tratti da Ionesco proprio dalle conversazioni e dagli esempi presenti nella grammatica pratica. Ma cosa ancora più straordinaria, che la copertina reca un appunto in matita dello stesso autore, che potrebbe essere il motto della sua opera: «Non trovo più le parole. Tutto è nero in me. O piuttosto chiaro e vuoto». Parole che possono essere chiarite meglio da una conferenza manoscritta inedita, che si apre con un perentorio, «Ho orrore del teatro» e continua con una confessione «Sono stato professore di francese. Potete immaginare cosa provavo a spiegare ai miei allievi Corneille, Racine, Molière, ecc. senza capirci niente».

http://www.libero-news.it/articles/view/581678

Harold Pinter (10 de Outubro de 1930 — 24 de dezembro de 2008) foi actor, director e um dos grandes dramaturgos do século XX, além de ter sido um destacado activista político.
Foi um dos representantes do teatro do absurdo, tal como Samuel Beckett e Eugène Ionesco. Há 4 anos, este dramaturgo britânico foi galardoado com o Prémio Nobel da Literatura.

“Az ideológiák szétválasztanak minket, az álmok és a kín összehoznak.”

Eugene Ionesco

Early in his life, van Gogh was a devout Christian and wanted to become involved in religion for his profession. He became a lay preacher and afterwards strived to become a painter of the working people. Capturing peasants’ everyday laboring in his paintings, he most famously did so in The Potato Eaters (1885). In a dark room lit only by a single candle hung above the table, the painting shows five peasants eating potatoes at the table. The overall darkness and dull green shades coloring the walls give off an impression of dirt and grime everywhere, and the shadows threaten that there are worse unseen areas in the room. The size of the people relative to the room and the low-hanging candle-lamp crowd the room to a stifling point, and the presence of only one community plate certainly is a statement of the family’s sanitary standards.

Some further reading selections from Kathleen Norris’ Acedia and Me.

Depression
Let’s call it sickness, a desert malady. Anyone could lose perspective in that heat, weakened by hunger, thirst, and uncertainty. Yet a curious fact about illness, including depression, is that it can bring us to clarity. We value the quality of attention that comes to us when we are not well. In “I’m Not OK, You’re Not OK [ her review of The Noonday Demon, Joyce Carol Oates observes that “those afflicted with depression are often ambivalent about it, as no one is ambivalent about physical illness.” Her latter assumption belies the fact that people of many faiths have experienced ailments and incapacities as a gateway to spiritual insight. But her observation about depression reflects the fact that many people are conflicted about a state in which the ploys they’ve used to color things in their favor are stripped away, and they sense that they are witnessing the world as it is. The light maybe harsher than we would like, but at least it forces us to see.

[This reminds me of Dostoyevsky’s creed: “One sees the truth more clearly when one is unhappy,” he wrote from Siberia. “And yet God gives me moments of perfect peace; in such moments I love and believe that I am loved; in such moments I have formulated my creed, wherein all is clear and holy to me. This creed is extremely simply: here it is. I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly and more perfect than the Saviour: I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but that there could be no one.”]

From his extensive research, Andrew Solomon reports evidence that depressed people have a more realistic view of the world than others. He writes of one study that showed “depressed and non-depressed people are equally good at answering abstract questions. When asked, however, about their control over an event, non-depressed people invariably believe themselves to have more control than they really have, and depressed people give an accurate assessment.”

In a test involving a video game, “depressed people. . . knew just how many little monsters they had killed’ while the non-depressed people consistently overestimated their kills by four to six times the actual amount. For all of that, Solomon reminds us that “major depression is far too stern a teacher: you needn’t go to the Sahara to avoid frostbite.” Still, we find ways to love that old devil we know. And “love” is not too strong a word. “Curiously enough:’ Solomon admits, “I love my depression. I do not love experiencing my depression, but I love the depression itself. I love who I am in the wake of it?’ He cannot help respecting that which gave him knowledge of “my own acreage, the full extent of my soul.”

Solomon’s perception is an ancient one; in the first century the Stoic Seneca observed that people “love their vices with a sort of despair, and hate them at the same time?’ Solomon is also in agreement with the desert fathers and mothers who made their stand in the desert in order to combat their demons and assess themselves more honestly. When he asserts that “the opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality:’ he is echoing the existential monastic view that the opposite of acedia is an energetic devotion. When I am at my worst, mired in torpor and despair, simply recalling this can give me hope.

“Hope” is the title of Solomon’s last chapter, and in it he writes, poignantly, of valuing his depression because it unearthed “what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day . when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It’s a precious discovery:’ It is also a costly one, and the price is exacted again and again. All too often we are like the man in the Gospel story who is cleansed of evil spirits only to find that the demons who have been displaced keep wandering, looking for a place to land. When they see that the house of his soul has once more been made neat and clean, they descend on him and make his condition even worse than before.

How is it possible to maintain our sanity, let alone to foster hope? Acedia is a particularly savage enemy, because it is not content with just a part of us. Evagrius writes that “the other demons are like the rising or setting sun in that they are found in only a part of the soul. The noonday demon, however, is accustomed to embrace the entire soul and oppress the spirit.” Evagrius, Cassian, and Andrew Solomon might agree that hope is nurtured when we can recall the peace of mind we once attained, and regard it as real, at least as real as our most troubled and anxious state. But we must start small. Often my first act of recovery is doing something as menial as dusting a bookshelf or balancing my checkbook.

If I am tempted to devalue such humble activities, I remember that acedia descended on Anthony as soon as he went to the desert, but when he prayed to be delivered from it, he was shown that any physical task, done in the right spirit, could free him. Likewise, Evagrius gives sound advice to anyone who has begun to recover from an assault of the demon: “What heals acedia is staunch persistence…Decide upon a set amount for yourself in every work and do not turn aside from it before you complete it?’

If my pride recoils from endeavors that seem futile in the face of my world-weary despair, I have to remember that disdaining ordinary, mundane chores that come to nothing can lead to my discounting personal relationships as well. Why honor my mother and my father, when they will grow old and infirm and then abandon me by dying? My own “antirrheticus” for that thought comes from Psalm 27:“Though father and mother forsake me, / the Lord will receive me.”  Under acedia’s siege I might ask: Why vow myself to a spouse, if it is “until death do us part”? We all die anyway, and even our sun will one day burn itself out, destroying life as we know it on earth. Does this mean that I don’t need to bother about loving, or living, here and now? I am better off asking: Why is it that acedia brings such thoughts to the table just as I would feast on life’s bounty? Only then can I fight back, embracing love and commitment as a source of strength and peace instead of despondency. Only then will I have defeated acedia, At least for now.

Both ancient and modern writers speak of the profound serenity that can come after a period of torment and trial. As Solomon puts it, “Depression at its worst is the most horrifying loneliness, and from it I learned the value of intimacy.” The pain is real, but remedy may yet be found. For Evagrius, the struggle with acedia is worthy because it leads not only to peace but also to joy. If, as the scholar Christoph Joest has written, acedia for Evagrius was the culmination of all the temptations, then its absence is the fulfillment of all virtues, which find their ultimate expression in love. That is why the struggle is worth our while.

Isaiah 43
I thought, “Oh, hell, it’s getting close to Christmas — I might as well see what’s up.” After consulting the liturgical calendar, I opened the Gideon Bible to Isaiah 43 and found this:

But now thus says the LORD, who created you; O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel:
Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name;
You are Mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned,
Nor shall the flame scorch you.
For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
Isaiah 43: 1-3 (NICJV)

Taking in these words as I listened to the steady sound of my husband’s breathing, I was profoundly glad for everything. This is a blessed time, I thought to myself. We wait and want for nothing. We are free to love, which is the ultimate freedom. Our situation might appear hopeless to others. But we are Adam and Eve, before the Fall, and all we know is heaven.

A Little Riff on Heaven and Hell
I suspect that any married person, or any monk for that matter, has at one time or another felt the loss and diminishment expressed by the fourth-century Abba Megethius when he said to his fellow monks, “Originally, when we met together we spoke of edifying things, encouraging one another. We were ‘like the angels’; we ascended up to the heavens. But now when we come together, we only drag one another down by gossiping, and so we go down to hell.”

For the early Christian abbas and ammas, both heaven and hell were to be found in present reality. While both were envisioned as an inheritance — one to be hoped for, the other avoided — neither existed apart from everyday experience. No doubt these monastics would have greeted Sartre’s famous existentialist credo “Hell is other people” by saying, “Yes, of course, and heaven as well.”

Eugene Ionesco wrote that “there is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think we live in alienation: in one way or another. . . humanity has always had a nostalgia for the freedom that is only beauty, that is only real life, plenitude, light?’ Heaven or hell? Either place is within our reach, for we carry it within us. Today is the first day, and the last. Heaven or hell: this is the moment, here, now. Make of it what you will.

To Say ‘God Is Love’ Is Like Saying, ‘Eat Wheaties’
In a series of talks in the 1960s, Thomas Merton foresaw our contemporary world as one-dimensional, a world in which “all words have become alike. . . To say ‘God is love:” he commented, “is like saying, ‘Eat Wheaties? – . . There’s no difference, except… that people know they are supposed to look pious when God is mentioned, but not when cereal is? Now that expensive handbags and jackets are displayed in store windows as reverentially as icons, and swimsuits alleged to have a slimming effect are advertised with the tagline “Why pray for a miracle when you can wear one?” even that distinction has been compromised.

And it matters. When magazines such as Time and Newsweek pretend that the news consists of page after page of unpaid advertisements for the latest gadgets, we may, as Merton predicted, fall into the trap of “[thinking we are informed:’ when in fact we are “living in an imaginary world?’

In this hyped-up world, broadcast and Internet news media have emerged as acedia’s perfect vehicles, demanding that we care, all at once, about a suicide bombing, a celebrity divorce, and the latest advance in nanotechnology. Advertisements direct our attention to automobiles; medications to combat high blood pressure, hemorrhoids, and insomnia; the Red Cross; a new household cleanser. When the “news” returns, there are appalling segues, such as one I witnessed recently, the screen going from “Child Sex Offender Search” to “Gas Prices Rise.” It all comes at us on the same level, and an innocent from another world might assume that we consider these matters to be of equal value and importance.

We may want to believe that we are still concerned, as our eyes drift from a news anchor announcing the latest atrocity to the NBA scores and stock market quotes streaming across the bottom of the screen. But the ceaseless bombardment of image and verbiage makes us impervious to caring.

As Thomas Merton predicted, our world has been flattened, and we’ve been had. Our concern with being up-to-date on the latest product -- be it a lotion promising to make our skin more youthful or a trend in politics, medicine, or spirituality -- is both “hypnotic [and] narcissistic, which is what a closed circle always is?’ Presented with a seductive product or idea, “you allow yourself to be seduced by it, and then…you’re happy?’ The problem, as Merton notes, is that “this is the way the abuse of language functions?’ Inundated with “self-validating, hypnotic formulas [that] are immune to contradictions” —  he uses as an example a maxim employed by military officers during the Vietnam War: We are destroying a village in order to save it — we lose the ability to reflect on either world events or our own lives.

It is hard work to look beneath the surfaces presented to us and examine the cultural and historical forces underlying current conditions. Why should we care enough to make the effort? In positing this question, we are well advised to name and confront our acedia. For it is an unseen enemy; like a windstorm, it is witnessed only in its damaging effects.

Acedia is not a relic of the fourth century or a hang-up of some weird Christian monks, but a force we ignore at our peril. Whenever we focus on the foibles of celebrities to the detriment of learning more about the real world — the emergence of fundamentalist religious and nationalist movements, the economic factors endangering our reefs and rain forests, the social and ecological damage caused by factory farming — acedia is at work. Wherever we run to escape it, acedia is there, propelling us to “the next best thing;’ another paradise to revel in and wantonly destroy. It also sends us backward, prettying the past with the gloss of nostalgia. Acedia has come so far with us that it easily attaches to our hectic and overburdened schedules. We appear to be anything but slothflul, yet that is exactly what we are, as we do more and care less, and feel pressured to do still more.

We may well ask: If we are always in motion, constantly engaged in self-improvement, and even trying to do good for others, how can we be considered uncaring or slothful? In Sloth, the late playwright Wendy Wasserstein concluded a brilliant parody of a self-help book, titled Sloth and How to Get It, with a cogent observation of the “ubermotivated” people of our time.

“When you achieve true slothdom’ she writes, “you have no desire for the world to change. True sloths are not revolutionaries, but the lazy guardians at the gate of the status quo:’ The culture may glorify people who do Pilates at dawn, work their BlackBerrys obsessively on the morning commute, multitask all day at the office, and put a gourmet meal on the table at night afier the kids come home from French and fencing lessons, but, Wasserstein asks, “are these hyper-scheduled, overactive individuals really creating anything new? Are they guilty of passion in any way? Do they have a new vision for their government? For their community? Or for themselves?” She suspects that “their purpose is to keep themselves so busy, so entrenched in their active lives, that their spirit reaches a permanent state of lethargiosis (the process of eliminating energy and drive, the vital first step in becoming a sloth.)”

Just look at us, with more money and less sleep than we know how to handle, except to go into debt, and take pills that get us up in the morning and others that let us rest at night. If we are to believe Bertrand Russell, who remarked that “one of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important:’ then a good many of us are on the edge. Despite the abundance of available therapies, we are still bewildered in the face of our neuroses and spiritual poverty and may be less well equipped than a fourth-century monk to deal with them.

In our desperate seeking after more precise terms to define our condition, we have become like the hapless citizens of Jean-Luc Godard’s savagely comic film Alphaville, who, in a dystopian future, receive new government-issued “Bibles” every day, dictionaries from which words are continually vanishing, because, as one character says, “they are no longer allowed.” She adds, mournfully, that “some words have disappeared that I liked very much” among them weep, tenderness, and conscience. Recalling a man she knew who wrote intriguing but “incomprehensible things” she says, “they used to call it poetry.”

I wonder whether that future is now, and why, if we have effectively banished the word demon, we are still so demon-haunted. It may be acceptable to speak again of demons. The New Yorker recently published a cartoon depicting an unshaven, bleary-looking businessman leaving for work, holding a liquor bottle along with his briefcase, and saying to his wife, “It’s Take Your Inner Demons to Work Day.”

To me this haggard man, even in his slothful appearance, epitomizes our latest, purely acedic mantra, “I don’t have time to think,” which presumes that we also don’t have time to care. Our busyness can’t disguise the suspicion that we are being steadily diminished, not so much living as passing time in a desert of our own devising. We might look for guidance to those earlier desert-dwellers, who had no word for depression, but whose vocabulary did include words for accidie, discernment, faith, grace, hope, and mercy.

They gave one another good counsel: Perform the humblest of tasks with full attention and no fussing over the whys and wherefores; remember that you are susceptible, at the beginning of any new venture, to being distracted from your purpose by such things as a headache, an intense ill will toward another, a neurotic and potent self-doubt. To dwell in this desert and make it bloom requires that we indulge in neither guilt nor vainglorious fantasizing, but struggle to know ourselves as we are.

In this process we will not escape sadness and pain; it can help to employ Amma Syncletica’s distinction between two forms of grief, one that liberates, another that destroys. “The first sort;’ she writes, “consists in weeping over one’s own faults” and over “the weakness of one’s neighbors, in order not to destroy one’s purpose, and attach oneself to the perfect good.” Yet “there is also a grief that comes from the enemy, full of mockery, which some call accidie. This spirit must be cast out, mainly by prayer and psalmody.” If we recognize the bad thought of acedia for what it is, we can indeed cast it out using the very means it has employed to torment us. Amma Syncletica called on prayer and psalmody for a reason. As the slogan has it, life’s a bitch, and then you die: so you might as well find a psalm and sing anyway.

« Par application de la stérilisation eugénique, on pourrait évidemment, et en assez peu de temps, raréfier considérablement les tares dominantes auxquelles on déclarerait l’offensive […] »

Jean Rostand, L’Hérédité humaine

« Ne doit-on pas enfin décider la mise en oeuvre de la castration chimique pour ce type d’individu ? », interroge le porte-parole de l’UMP Frédéric Lefebvre après le meurtre de la joggeuse de Milly-la-Forêt, dont un homme déjà condamné pour viol a reconnu être l’auteur. Il juge, en effet, nécessaire d’en « tirer les conséquences immédiates en termes de responsabilité et de modification de la loi ».

Idée reçue cinq sur cinq, pensez-vous !, par la ministre de la justice, Michèle Alliot-Marie qui, toutes affaires cessantes se précipite pour affirmer à son tour qu’elle souhaite que la castration chimique puisse « s’appliquer pendant l’incarcération, mais aussi après » et que c’est en ce sens qu’elle fera une  proposition « dans le cadre de la loi qui sera déposée avant fin octobre » au Parlement.

Il s’agirait donc de pouvoir infliger aux délinquants sexuels un traitement médicamenteux en vue d’inhiber leurs pulsions sexuelles, à la fois durant les périodes d’aménagement de leurs peines de détention ou dans le cadre de leurs obligations de suivi.  Il faut encore « que la personne, qui doit être volontaire, n’ait pas ensuite la possibilité d’y renoncer, sauf à retourner en prison », affirme la garde des sots.

Ainsi donc, on inscrirait la castration pour les délinquants sexuels dans la loi, autrement dit, la possibilité de les opérer pour les priver de leur faculté de se reproduire.

Si les pulsions de ces délinquants sexuels représentent un caractère jugé néfaste, ce avec quoi l’on s’accordera volontiers, prôner une telle mesure, par contre, sans aucune considération des taux de récidive relativement faible de ce type de délinquance  (autour d’1,6% selon le Ministère de la Justice ; un cas étant toujours un cas de trop en matière de violence), révèle davantage une perspective eugénique plutôt que de précaution.

Et je repense aux propos que tenait le Président à Michel Onfray, dans le cadre d’un échange pour le magasine Philosophie. « J’inclinerais, pour ma part, disait-il alors, à penser qu’on naît pédophile, et c’est d’ailleurs un problème que nous ne sachions soigner cette pathologie. Il y a 1200 ou 1300 jeunes qui se suicident en France chaque année, ce n’est pas parce que leurs parents s’en sont mal occupés ! Mais parce que, génétiquement, ils avaient une fragilité, une douleur préalable. Prenez les fumeurs : certains développent un cancer, d’autres non. Les premiers ont une faiblesse physiologique héréditaire. Les circonstances ne font pas tout, la part de l’inné est immense. »

Plein de ressources et déjà en accord avec Lefebvre, le Président croit, par ailleurs, mais pas sans lien, à la détection des futurs délinquants à travers l’observation des comportements des enfants de moins de trois ans.

Pas sans lien, non. Le Président et sa suite devraient se satisfaire de voir aujourd’hui une possibilité de résoudre ce problème de la délinquance en général et de la délinquance sexuelle en particulier qu’il avait donc affirmé être génétique.

Une telle mesure de castration proposée par un gouvernement de Sarkozy renvoie inévitablement aux visées eugéniques, à la mise en œuvre de méthodes susceptibles, entre autres, d’éliminer les caractères néfastes ou jugés tels d’une partie de la population. Comment dès lors être plus radical, si la délinquance sexuelle est génétique, qu’en empêchant ces délinquants de se reproduire.

« Prenez un cercle, caressez-le, il deviendra vicieux ! »

Eugène Ionesco

A bon entendeur !

BaRT

3 octobre 2009

ps : j’offre ici une solution au problème de la délinquance financière et de l’évasion fiscale : ne vous acharnez pas à identifier des comptes bancaires ici ou là, à traquer les mouvements d’argent à travers le monde, etc., mais empêchez simplement les riches de se reproduire !

Eleanor M. Bender, ed. | Open Spaces, Number 29, Spring | 1980

I came across this not long ago, while looking through books at my parents’ home. It’s a 64-page staple-bound poetry magazine. On the cover is a photo my dad took of two young poets. One of them is Harryette Mullen, and it turns out she was poet-in-residence at the Galveston Arts Center, where my dad directed the gallery. I always thought that I’d never met a “poet” until I left Texas and went to college in Oregon, but she was a friend of my parents when I was one year old. More proof that they’re far cooler than I gave them credit for when I was in high school. The magazine also includes work by Ahmos Zu-Bolton II, Marge Piercy, X. J. Kennedy, Susan Ludvigson, Robert Wilkinson, Tess Gallagher, Carolyn Kizer, and Marilyn Hacker.

August Kleinzahler | Sleeping It Off in Rapid City | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 2008

Kleinzahler keeps me on my toes with his vocabulary, wit, and formal variety, and this book makes me want to write poems in ballparks, streetcars, hotel rooms, and diners. I’ve just moved to the Bay Area, and I’m sure I’ll often wander through the fog with these poems in mind.

Eugene Ionesco, trans. Donald Watson | Rhinoceros | Penguin | 2000

If Beckett had dropped acid and interpreted certain themes in Moby Dick in a play …

Kenneth Rexroth, trans. | One Hundred Poems from the Chinese | New Directions | 1971

For ten months I was in Shanghai, so this anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty poets was a constant companion as I tried to figure out what was under the sidewalk besides the subway. Su Tung P’o (a.k.a. Su Dongpo or Su Shi) is represented by some amazing poems.

Kenneth Rexroth, trans. | One Hundred Poems from the Japanese | New Directions | 1977
Kenneth Rexroth & Ikuko Atsumi, trans. | Women Poets of Japan | New Directions | 1977

I was too busy eating during a month-long trip around Japan to read much of anything, but ever since leaving I’ve pulled these classics from the shelf and have been rereading them constantly. Lady Otomo No Sakanoe’s “Have I learned to understand you?” is perhaps the most beautiful rhetorical question I’ve ever read.

Rimbaud, trans. Wallace Fowlie | Complete Works, Selected Letters | The University of Chicago Press | 1966

“Mon triste cœr bave à la poupe” says it all.

Sawako Nakayasu | Hurry Home Honey | Burning Deck | 2009

In the wrong hands love can get old fast, but Sawako Nakayasu’s fantastic and inventive poems are as contemporary as Cupid’s arrows get. This book is a must-read for anyone who has a heart.

Tod Marshall | The Tangled Line | Canarium Books | 2009
Ish Klein | UNION! | Canarium Books | 2009

We were super lucky to get Tod’s and Ish’s books for our first two Canarium single-author titles. I’ve read them both at least a dozen times, and I keep coming back for more.

Haruki Murakami | What I Talk About When I Talk About Running | Knopf | 2008

I like this book but only because I’ve been on a running kick and Murakami makes writing prose seem fun. But overall, it’s poorly organized and often flat—it should have been called something like “Notes Toward a Book About Running.” Still, good for anyone training for a road race or a triathlon, etc., and often funny.

More Joshua Edwards here.

‘Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.’

- Eugene Ionesco

Dos encontros surge o absurdo no universo de Jan Němec. Entre os principais cineastas da Czech New Wave, foi – ao lado de Věra Chytilová – certamente aquele que levou seu cinema a um caminho mais radical. Ele fala: “O diretor precisa criar seu próprio mundo… um mundo independente da realidade, como ela se apresenta. Os pintores criaram seus mundos, os compositores também. Mas só poucos cineastas alcançaram esse objetivo: certamente Chaplin, certamente Bresson e certamente Buñuel”. O mundo de Němec é estruturado em cima de encontros.

Em Diamantes da Noite, de 1964, temos o encontro de dois jovens fugitivos com velhos nazistas. Já em A Festa e os Convidados, de 1966, há o encontro entre um grupo de pessoas e seres estranhos que promovem um baquete. Nos três episódios de Martíres do Amor, de 1967, uma série de encontros – imaginários ou não – pontuam a narrativa. São eles que fornecem a chave para o absurdo.

A Festa e os Convidados é o mais emblemático dos três. A própria roteirista e esposa de Němec, Ester Krumbachová (que também trabalhou com Věra Chytilová em As Pequenas Margaridas e Fruto do Paraíso e dirigiu o raríssimo Killing The Devil em 1970) cita o nome do dramaturgo do absurdo Eugène Ionesco como a principal referência. No início, vemos um grupo de pessoas de meia idade bem vestidas na fartura de um piquenique na floresta. De repente, há o encontro com sujeitos estranhos. Primeiro o grupo é pateticamente ameaçado – obrigado a ficar dentro de um círculo delimitado por pedrinhas no chão. Depois surge o anfitrião, um velho mais simpático que  os convida para um banquete. O filme é uma das obras mais desconcertantes da década de 60.

A relação com a obra de Ionesco é evidente. Há uma série de diálogos incompletos que remetem às conversas imaginárias de As Cadeiras, de 1952. A própria passividade com que o grupo de pessoas se submete àquela realidade traz um parentesco com o clássico do dramaturgo romeno Os Rinocerontes, de 1960. No entanto, há uma diferença primordial. Enquanto Ionesco costumava levar o absurdo ao clímax, muitas vezes em ultrajantes cenas de morte, o filme de Němec busca exatamente o contrário. Em todo momento há pistas falsas de que algo incrível vai acontecer. O anti-clímax do desfecho é altamente sugestivo.

Imediatamente após a invasão soviética na Tchecoslováquia, em 1968, A Festa e os Convidados foi “banido para sempre”. Os comunistas russos perceberam o alto teor subversivo da obra. Os homens que ameaçam o grupo de pessoas se assemelham bastante à polícia secreta comunista. Algumas falas do anfitrião do banquete, inclusive, foram tiradas de propagandas do partido. O próprio banquete, que tem pouquíssima comida, é um contraponto à fartura do início. Essa nova realidade que eles aceitam passivamente fica ainda mais próxima da realidade comunista do Leste Europeu quando um dos personagens resolve abandonar e fugir pela floresta, uma metáfora clara à quantidade enorme de pessoas que fugiam daqueles países.

Essa tendência ao absurdo para narrar a realidade conturbada daquele período é algo que navega por diversos filmes da Czech New Wave (e pela própria nova literatura tchecoslovaca daquele período). Não por acaso, a obra de Franz Kafka, que nasceu em Praga, só foi traduzida para o tcheco na década de 60. Durante o exílio, em 1975, Němec chegou a filmar uma versão em curta-metragem de A Metamorfose.

Martíres do Amor também investe no absurdo, mas abraça um lirismo mais surrealista. Os três episódios apresentam jovens solitários, um deles o cineasta inglês Lindsay Anderson, que procuram novas realidades no encontro com outras pessoas. A importância da música é enorme, encaminha todos os três filmes pelas nuances do free-jazz, da música pop, a tradicional, a militar… É um filme praticamente sem diálogos, mas com bastante som. O destaque é o último episódio, A Aventura do Órfão Rudolf, de uma leveza poética singular. Němec define sua obra: “o mundo das três histórias é uma evocação da atmosfera de vários filmes – as comédias clássicas do cinema mudo, das histórias sentimentais, as comédias sociais… Poderia até ter um subtítulo, Das Reminiscências de um Cinéfilo”.

Também há pouquíssimos diálogos em Diamantes da Noite. Mas dessa vez não há música, muito menos leveza. É um filme angustiado, também alimentado pelo imaginário surrealista, incluindo uma citação clara às formigas de Buñuel. Se em Martíres do Amor é a música que administra as histórias, aqui são os ruídos que falam grosso, desde os passos desesperados na floresta, à chuva purificadora, além dos assustadores tiros e palmas nazistas. Notável também a cena em que o desesperado protagonista imagina matar uma mulher diversas vezes. Ele está fugindo de velhos nazistas que correm pela floresta com espingardas e cachorros. O encontro é fatal.

Depois de 1968, Jan Němec se concentrou em registrar mais um encontro, dessa vez dos tanques soviéticos com a poesia da Primavera de Praga, em seu documentário Oratório a Praga. Também foi fatal. Por causa do filme, teve sua promissora carreira dentro da Tchecoslováquia vetada por mais de vinte anos.

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     I was thinking today about Theater of the Absurd and mused about how the joke is really on its practitioners and aficionados.  I am most familiar with the work of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, so most of my comments will be based on my knowledge of them and of their plays.  I say that the joke is on them for three reasons:  the words in their plays have meaning, the playwrights themselves do not live as though their worldview is true, and the plays would not appear absurd if their worldview were true.

     When I consider the plays themselves, I reflect on how they contain words that have reognized meanings, and they often contain bits of straightforward diaglogue that makes some degree of sense.  The absurdity comes with things like the insertion of nonsense words, illogical dialogues, and dialogue that has nothing to do with the action.  Nevertheless, most absurdist plays contain words and phrases that make sense in and of themselves, and the reason that the words and phrases make sense, is that the human mind has created them and imbued them with meaning.

     If the world were as the existentialist absurdist playwrights claim that it is, I do not believe that language would have meaning.  In fact, all that human beings could do would  be to babble sounds and die from acting completely chaotically.  The world according to these playwrights is, after all, meaningless, purposeless, random, and chaotic.

     Of course, hardly anyone of the absurdist playwrights or their audience members live as though the world is that way.  They sleep, eat, converse, work, and play as though the world and their lives have discernible meaning and a high level of predictability.  I’m reminded of a story involving Francis Schaeffer.  One day a young man was arguing with him that reality is an illusion, that what we preceive is a projection of our own mind and not something real.  One of the other guests got exasperated with that nonsense and grabbed a tea kettle full of boiling water.  He held the tea kettle over the young man’s head and said, “If what you say is true, then it would not matter if I pour this boiling water on you.”

     The fellow exclaimed, “You’re crazy!” and left abruptly.  It is unknown if the point ever sank in.

     Even if the things around us are not real, we must live, if we are to live, as though they are.  We must actually eat food, for example.  We must care for our teeth, or they will rot causing us great pain and the need for extraction.

     You know, the playwrights themselves show that something in the universe is ordered and meaningful–the human mind.  Using their own powerful minds they have created outstanding works of art.  They have every reason to be humanists rather than existentialists, since they themselves show what amazing entities human beings are.  If not humanists, they should at least realize that they have every reason to be egoists, since they are geniuses with amazingly creative and powerful brains.  (I think that essentially they are egoists, but I do not think that most of them admit it.)

     I find them lazy, to be frank.  The world is not exactly as they wish it were, so rather than look at it long and hard, they dismiss it as meaningless, purposeless, and chaotic.  They do not take the time to notice the beauty, order, meaning, and purpose that countless others recognize.  They even have to deny the reality that is right before their eyes.  They are atheists,  for the most part.  They might as well be nihilists, in which case there is no point in writing plays or in doing anything.  There’s not even any point in living. 

     But they do (or did) live, and they write plays.  Interesting!

     Not only must we live as though things are real, we must also live as though things make sense.  It might be fun  in an absurdist play to have a character pull the trigger on a gun and have balloons fall from the ceiling, but in the real world the gun would fire and the bullet would hit something, and we all know it and act accordingly.

     In fact, the reality that guns fire bullets is what makes an absurdist play absurd.  If the gun in the play shot a bullet, it would not be absurd.  And if guns in the real world caused a downpour of balloons, then the play would not be absurd.  The order of the real world is juxtaposed against the disorder of the absurdist play, and that is how audiences recognize the absurdity of the play.

     In fact, if the world were as the absurdist playwrights believe it to be, there would be nothing to say or write about their plays.  A person would not even know that he had been to a play or whether he had enjoyed it or found it boring or stupid or annoying. 

     Nobody watches Waiting for Godot or The Bald Soprano and says, “Yup, that’s exactly what the world is like.”  But that is just what the existentialist playwrights want you to think, or at least what they claim that they think.  Don’t buy it.  Please notice, along with me, that the joke is on them, not on you or me.